“Winter is coming.” Before it was a harbinger of dark times on HBO’s Game of Thrones, this expression had been a favourite of Northern hemisphere dwellers whenever the first crisp breeze of September rolled in. In anticipation of the colder months to come, we at cléo decided to end the year with a topic to keep us all feeling warm and toasty up here in our chilly Canadian headquarters: HOT. We’re looking for articles that consider all facets that this word invokes, from temperature to steamy temptations.
Topics to consider…
Heatwave: summer flicks that make you feel the heat Summer of Sam (1999), Rear WIndow (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Dirty Dancing (1987), Body Heat (1981), Do the Right Thing (2989), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), In the Cut (2003)
Make-over movies: hot all along She’s All That (1999), the Audrey Hepburn make-over quadrilogy (Roman Holiday [1953], Sabrina [1954], Funny Face [1957], My Fair Lady [1964]), Working Girl (1988), Miss Congeniality (2000), La Femme Nikita (1990)
Hotheads: “badly-behaved” women and portrayals of anger and frustration Semana Santa (2015), Bless Their Little Hearts (1983), Lady Macbeth (2017), Ginger & Rosa (2012), Je Tu Il Elle (1974), Set It Off (1996), Strike! (1998), Monster (2003)
Hell on earth: pressure, perseverance and global warming Strong Island (2017), The Innocents (2016), The Forest For The Trees (2003), Spa Night (2016), Your Children Come Back to You (1979), Bush Mama (1979), The Lobster (2016), Les Ordres (1974), Evolution (2016), Get Out (2017), the true crime genre, apocalypse films
Hot to trot: films by women and non-binary directors that feature an explicitly erotic/sexual (“hot”) gaze/POV Stud Life (2012), The Love Witch (2016), Fire (1996), Holy Smoke (1999), Une Vraie Jeune Fille (1976), Don’t Laugh at My Romance (2007), Clair Obscur (2016), The Night Porter (1974), The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Erika Lust and feminist porn, nudist films of Doris Wishman
To submit: IN ONE PDF DOCUMENT send us your pitch of 300 words and three writing samples (please send links or, if no link is available, single-spaced articles no longer than 3000 words). Label the PDF document using this format: LastName_FirstName_FILM
Tip! Please look over our past issues to get a sense of the kind of work we’re looking for and to ensure we haven’t already covered the film you’d like to write about. We also have a Letterboxd list of titles we’ve covered that we update after every new issue.
The deadline for pitches is September 15, 2017. We will be in touch regarding accepted pitches. Articles should be between 1500–2000 words. The deadline to submit articles will be October 16, 2017. Compensation in the form of an honorarium will be provided for contributors selected for the issue (based on our current funding, cléo pays $125 CAD per article).
Submissions and general inquiries: cleofilmjournal@gmail.com